Two days with Tony about collection

    It's quiet interesting these days. I have got known better with my classmates. The project in these two days is about collection. On Monday Tony asked us to collected 15 things within a particular range of colours, they can be made of a variety of materials, can be manmade and natural. The colour I picked is from red to yellow, there is orange between them. Because I didn't have much time to collect and most shops were closed that time, I collected things in my own room. 

    It's very interesting that when we put our collected things together in 3-people-group. We put them around the colour circle. Things became plentiful and attractive. 

    Except arranging them in group based on colour, there are more basis to arrange them into different groups. We tried to put them from hard to soft by touching the surface of these things, from rough to smooth and based on the shape they were. From these pictures we can see that different arrangement can make these group look quiet different. This concept I think will be useful to my MA project either. I think I can collect different types of old and new materials to contrast them and rearrange them to create a new idea.

    Tony told us many artists and designers who like collecting and showed us many works they did. I can do more research about these collectors on line. He also showed us the amazing views about his stay in India and his collection about different types of books. They were all interesting for the appearance, the design and the contents. I enjoyed reading them very much. Different country have different thoughts about design. The collection can help me to get well know about the different types of culture and design better. By comparing these collections, there also will be found something interesting that I have not noticed. The different design and appearance of these books,

    This book' designer cut a small circle on each page, so people can see a little content on the next page during reading. In my project, the model will combine the old and new things, I can put this concept in the model to make old and new being together. 

    When open this book, it's just a paper with pictures and words. But it can turn into a book when fold it in a special way. I really like this design and I hope I can use this idea in my explanation for my project.

    I like the way of showing pictures on this book, it is more like manmade. Actually it's a simple design, a picture with tapes stick on the book. I can use the way in the project about the collecting old and new buildings' details. 

Workshop1: My journey, expectations-endings and beginning.

    In this workshop I have drew three sketches as a metaphor to talk about the past, the present and the future. I will simply introduce my graduation project to perform my past, some examples and explanation for what I am interested in now and the project what I am going to do in the future.  This helps me to think more about what I will do in my MA programme. 

    The first sketch standing for my past. I imaged there was a forest in front of me. There were many ways to go into this forest, but which way would be the best or worst was unknown, what would appear in the forest was unknown. Actually I felt confused in my first two years in college. The courses were related to interior design, architecture design and environmental design, and I was not sure which was I really learned well or I really want to learn.  Things getting better in next two years and my works were more clear and better.
    The second one is a sketch which for my present. There is clearly one way to walk. This stands for that I have found my main direction now, although I still don't know what kind of things are exactly in front of me. I know the course in UAL is very different  from I learned in China, the concept, the way of design, even the learning methods. But these differences are what I need. I used to do what my teachers want me to do, and now I just want to learn independently and think independently. I am a girl who is afraid of the new environment or talking to new people. Maybe it is difficult for the beginning, I should focus on the orientation and adapt to the learning methods quickly.
    The last sketch is for the future.  Deep inside the forest, the view become wild and the scenery become beautiful. I hope my future is like the scenery, beautiful and bright.
    My graduation project was a challenge to me which related to urban planning. We worked as a 4-people-group. This project is to design and plan a cultural and commercial block in Beijing. It is a real project which our tutor's work team is doing. There will have shopping malls, hotel, museum and cultural communication center, What we designed is more modern and idealized. I have learned variety of ways to design and the relevance between different architecture design.

    I have already did several projects about old building or block reconstruction. I'm interested in how things, especially buildings change between old and new. Old building and block reconstruction don't mean exactly build again. In London, there are many old buildings still being used and the functions are still complete. But in China, many people still can not understand why old buildings are important to us. They just believe that the development equals modern west style. In my opinion, buildings carry the cultural and historic memory for the city where they are. A city need cultural memory itself. Besides some degree of protection for the old buildings and districts, they also need revising, updating or modernizing based on keeping their characters and scale. The way of changing the old buildings in old and new can be a large variety. The purpose of changing is always for performing the cultural memory of the city. 

 the British Museum

Musée d’Orsay in Paris

    These two classical examples respect the value of history and keep the basic construct of buildings. When people walk into these buildings, they can still feel the history of the buildings clearly. How to make the old buildings get more adapted to the modern society is what I want to do research. The old buildings not only are the historical protected buildings, but also are the normal, less value and less protected old buildings. I may do research from the material, construct, cultural style or other respects. The MA project may not be a complete project for buildings. It can be presented a space made by different old and new materials.

    In the future, I also want to visit different countries to learn while seeing different design about architecture and interior, feeling the different design cultural. I'm not sure what I will do at last, but there is one thing I am sure, I want to share what I see and what I learned these and next few years with young people, maybe a teacher in college is more suitable for my dream.

The first day in UAL

    Today is my first day to study in UAL, the course is orientation to MA programme and my tutor is Alexandra, a lovely lady, she introduced the study I will do in the next 6 weeks. Actually it is my first time to have a tutor one to one. Also I need to study with the students who learn orientation to BA programme, the teachers in first day are Michael and Tony. I think it is good for me to make more friends and practice my English more frequently.
    The study atmosphere is quite different from I had in China, teachers are close to students, the class is more like being chatting with friends to me. The first project is about design newspaper. We shared the interesting stories which happened to us in pairs and everyone was a journalist to write down an article about the mate's story, then we designed the page like newspaper. The process was interesting, it gave us chance to know each other better, to learn the different country's culture, to practice English better.

    This is my work. I wrote the story about YUI who is a japanese girl. She told me that she had lived in New York for two years, she found that sushi in New York is quiet different from her hometown. I like Japanese culture and sushi, so I was also interested in this story. 

    I also saw several students previous work, they are all amazing and talented. Quite different from my work, they are more close to art creation. I forgot to bring my work today and I'm curious about how teachers and classmates think about mine.